Miles to Go
by seriousscientist
Summary: Post S7 finale. I never wanna leave you, but I can't make you bleed if I'm alone.
1. Night 1

Three weeks ago Brennan had sat up in bed into the wee hours of the morning reading background check after background check on innocent doctoral candidates and au pairs with decades of experience, while Booth snored on gently beside her.

Two weeks ago Brennan had nursed Christine in a posh Hollywood hotel suite, watching the sun set in a series of brilliant pink and orange hues, over an ocean of questionable hygiene.

Tonight, or more accurately, the wee hours of tomorrow, she finds herself curled up in a motel just west of nowhere, USA. A motel whose receptionist certainly would not pass a background check of any sort. A motel with hygiene so questionable she's forced to leave Christine in her car seat to sleep. The baby's sleepy snuffles are comforting, but a poor substitute, if not depressing reminder, of Booth's sleepy sounds. If she believed in karma, she'd be questioning her every life decision right now.

They haven't spent a night apart since Christine was born. It is hard to believe considering the nature of their work: murderers don't tend to confine themselves to the DC-metro area (despite what the local news hour would have the public fear). However, they have managed to spend every night since their daughter's early arrival tucked under one roof, one bedspread. Booth spent most of her maternity leave on desk duty, ensuring nine to five hours and even a few extended lunches, but more importantly no overnight stays at any crime scenes. They had even gone so far as to drag Max across the country with them to sit with Christine in a Hollywood hotel (a nice, spacious penthouse on the production company's dime, but a hotel nonetheless) for a week while they secured the future of her movie.

For decades Brennan had refused to let her happiness, her comfort and security depend on anyone else. Tonight she realizes just how far Booth had deconstructed that wall, the silence and half-cold bed causing an acute ache in the left side of her chest.

Tonight, their little family is broken and scattered; only Christine sleeps on blissfully unaware. She knows she needs to sleep, having driven long into the night to place enough distance between them and D.C. Them and Pelant. Them and a warrant for her arrest. She still has thousands of miles to travel before reaching the first location to meet Max, crisscrossing the country and doubling back to evade detection. But she also has a list of tasks on Max's "fugitive checklist" running through her mind to ensure their safety: change cars, dye her hair, purchase some gender neutral clothing to disguise her little girl, and on and on and on. She knows it was the right decision to take Christine with her, leaving Booth free to prove her innocence and unwilling to wait to find out whether Pelant's revenge extends beyond herself and to her family. But she still makes a mental note to ask Sweets about the development of formative memory when they return. When.

Max's plan currently spans six weeks. He pushed for more, begged her to begin considering a location to settle permanently if necessary. She couldn't do it. She is well aware of the parallels this whole situation draws against her own childhood and Max's fugitive years, but she can't bring herself to believe that this is anything but a temporary solution. She hopes Booth understands that. Her parting words were meant to convey just that, if she didn't love Booth she would have disappeared with Christine with no intention of returning home. She hopes he understood her.

Christine begins to squirm as her bunny has fallen out of the carrier, out of reach. Brennan tucks the stuffed animal beneath her daughter's arm and silently thanks her father for his diligence in packing their meager belongings. Everything he chose was neutral in color and sentimentality, except for Christine's bunny. They carry nothing else that could easily identify them once the FBI puts out the inevitable APB. She even left her ring tucked inside Christine's polka-dot blanket and can only hope that Booth finds it, a backup message of sorts, an inanimate reassurance.

Her mind is finally starting to slow down, laden with heavy sadness, she begins to doze when the first waves of sunlight start to reach around the curtain edges.

xXx

He paces from one room to the next, surveying the damage. Their home, their beautiful safe home, has been violated by evil from top to bottom.

It was hours before he was able to pull himself from the church steps, weighed down by the grief of watching his family drive away from him, with no solid plans to return. For the first time since he was ten years old he had had a family, an honest to God, textbook nuclear family. Despite his assurances to Parker that there previous arrangement was just as good as anyone elses, in just a few short months he had become so happy, so content with their family: Mom, Dad, son, daughter. And now they were gone. He stared blankly into the engine of his car for at least another hour before summoning the energy to fix the damage Max had done, before summoning the energy to make the drive back to his empty house.

Except it wasn't empty. The FBI forensics team had swarmed his home, turning over every bit of furniture, touching every object that he and Bones had so lovingly and painstakingly unpacked just a few short months earlier. He was not surprised to find that in Caroline's place stood a new young district attorney, all too eager to upend his home and heart. One more point in Pelant's column.

Seated in the kitchen, he answered Finn's invasive questions about Brennan's whereabouts honestly and without apology, sending a silent, painful thank you for her forethought in keeping him in the dark about her plans. Not that Finn believed him. Booth would not have either. Daughter of a fugitive, with her own child to protect? Didn't take an FBI profiler to predict her escape. Could he really say he didn't see this coming, didn't help plan her getaway? But thanks to her deception, he could. And for that reason alone he remained suspended instead of in custody.

Eventually the team finished their search, filing out the front door one by one, and into a van parked around the corner where he knew they would remain, watching his every move. He felt a new wave of guilt for every suspect, every family member of a suspect whose home he had left is a similar semblance of disarray.

So from room to room he went, standing in doorways for a long moment, just absorbing the chaos in the silence. He paced the upstairs hallway for long moments, unwilling to cross the threshold of their bedroom alone. Finally, he pulled the door closed and crossed to Christine's room instead.

It was then that he finally cracked. His baby girl's room, ransacked. The sheets were torn from the flipped mattress of her crib, the books torn from her shelves and pages splayed, happy fluffy farm animals smiling up at Booth as if mocking him. He sank to his knees, fist to his mouth, stifling the urge to both sob and put the fist through the closest wall. He allowed himself just a moment before putting the rage to use and frantically, if not violently, began put his daughter's room back in order. Lastly he righted the white sofa, tumbling down onto the cushions in exhaustion.

But it was too quiet to sleep. No light baby snores, no static of the baby monitor, no Brennan lightly flipping the pages of journal or glow of her laptop screen to lull him to sleep. He took a deep breath to smother the urge to sob again, and reached down into the wicker basket to pull out Parker's remote control. Flicking the switch, Christine's mobile began to turn slowly and play. He closed his eyes and lay back on the sofa, trying to visualize his family somewhere safe, letting the music calm him the same way it had his daughter for the last three months. Tonight he would grieve, tomorrow he would get to work bringing them home.

As the sun begins to reflect an magnify off his daughter's pale yellow walls, night one finally ends.


	2. Night 3

Christine had decided that she no longer likes hats. Brennan sighed heavily before leaning down to retrieve the baseball cap the baby had flung to the dingy diner floor for the third time since they were seated. She braced the baby against her lap with one hand as she fished around under the table and finally hooked the brim with her pinky.

As she pulled back up, she gasped in surprise at the man who had silently slid into the booth across from them.

Max has dyed his hair. Not quite jet black, but pretty close. It took every bit of energy inside of her not to burst into tears. Rebuilding her relationship with Max over these last few years has not been easy, but one thing that made it simpler was that between her being fifteen years older, and his fugitive plastic surgery, they were almost two whole new people forming a whole new relationship. But right now, with this darker hair, he looks like her _dad_. The one who went for Christmas presents two decades ago and never came back. She can of course catalogue the obvious difference in his facial structure due to age and prosthetics, but for a split second she's fifteen again, reliving a long suppressed memory of sitting across the breakfast table from her dad, waiting for her mother to finish flipping pancakes, just like a normal family.

The spell was broken by the shriek of her own daughter, barely fifteen weeks old, trying to launch herself across the table to her grandfather.

"Hiya baby!" He smiled as he reached out to relieve her of the excited child, rocking her gently as Christine babbled at him. "I thought you loved hats, what are you torturing your mom for?"

Brennan sighed again and tucked the hat into her pocket, giving up on disguising her daughter's pale, curly locks for the moment.

"Maybe you just don't like baseball, huh? Gonna be a hockey fan like your old man?"

Brennan knew that he was making small talk to keep up appearances, to keep from drawing any suspicious attention from the handful of other diners, but the normality of the conversation grated on her nerves. He was too good at this, too comfortable with this situation while she herself is anything but.

"Hit any traffic, baby?" He asked, drawing his attention back up to his daughter.

She stared blankly for a moment, wondering what kind of traffic she could possibly have hit travelling on nothing but the barren highways of the midwest. He patiently waited for her to understand that he was asking whether they'd had any trouble making their escape from D.C. Brennan sighed again in frustration. She was not good at this, double meanings, code words, non-verbal communication. Why exactly did she think she could pull off being a fugitive?

She finally shook her head to assure him they hadn't been followed or aroused any suspicions to the best of her knowledge.

"Good, good. We're making good time, we may even be early to the party after all. I never bought into that fashionably late business. Before I forget, I bought that birthday card for your grandmother." Max reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pastel envelope. "Make sure you sign it and put it with her present, ok?"

He slid it across the table to her and she noted that it was too heavy to contain only cardstock. She glanced quickly inside before tucking it into the diaper bag, taking inventory of the IDs, passports and a handful of prepaid gift cards.

"Sure, Dad." Brennan paused and wondered what she should refer to him as. Darker hair aside, their little threesome must appear as some type of family to anyone observing. But the FBI must be looking for Max (or Matt, or Columbus) as well at this point, knowing his history and noting his absence from D.C.

But he smiled gently in reassurance, this was just a temporary stop and none of their faces had made it to the news, yet. "Well, I'm starving. Let's have some dinner so we can turn in and get an early start for your Grandmother's first thing tomorrow."

Christine started to fuss again, the distraction of her grandfather's sudden appearance having grown old. Max offered her his pinky which she immediately pulled into her tiny mouth.

"How is the little one liking her first road trip?"

"We listened to some children's radio station for several hundred miles, which held her attention for quite a while. However, I found the insipid repetition and high pitch singing voices much less soothing myself."

Brennan gave in to the small talk, despite the thousands of topics she would much rather discuss with Max. What's happening in D.C.? What's next? Can they really do this? Booth. Instead she bit her tongue and answered his inane questions about the weather, the road, and their apparent trip to her non-existent grandmother's 90th birthday. They ordered dinner, and she flinched as the waitress placed a side of french fries between them. She wished he had picked anywhere but a diner so she might stand a chance of forgetting about home for just a few minutes. She wondered if her vegetarian order was too obvious and spent most of the meal pushing it around her plate.

When they finally retired to the motel for the night, Christine was still wide awake having nothing to do but sleep in the car for the last two days. Brennan dreaded another sleepless night but was grateful that they were now free to turn up the television to drown out Max's plans for the next leg of their trip.

"How are you holding up, honestly?" Max asked after she settled Christine into the portable crib that he had presented her with (requesting a hotel crib would bring too much attention, he claimed), and settled herself wearily up against the headboard of one of the room's double beds.

"Christine has grown weary of the road and the lack of visual stimulation the back seat of the car presents. She is not taking the bottle as well as I had hoped, but it is too inconvenient to stop for too long every few hours to nurse. I was afraid we wouldn't be able to meet you in time." She admitted, too tired to sugar coat her thoughts for her father.

"I would have waited. You know that."

"It appears you were able to get yourself out of D.C. without any… delays?" She asked, noting a lack of physical injury to his person and he knew she was referring to Booth.

"He's okay, baby. He's not happy, but he's okay." She nodded in feigned acceptance, the image of him standing in the street as she drove away still burned in her brain. Will he ever be able to forgive her? Max continued to reassure her, "He understood, I made sure. Anonymous sources say he went back to work, desk duty of course."

"Sources say?" Brennan snorted. Hodgins as an anonymous source, part of his very own shadowy anti-government conspiracy. On some level he had to love this right now.

"We're still negotiating the official moniker; his Latin bug names were just a bit too obvious, and quite the mouthful. Have I mentioned how helpful it is for you to have such a paranoid acquaintance?"

Max had resisted her suggestion of enlisting Hodgins help at first, having severed ties completely while on the lam in his previous lives. But Brennan had rightfully pointed out, he had never done so with an infant before, and though Max seemed to have money stashed any number of places, he couldn't possibly have prepared to travel with companions quite like this. She was not entirely comfortable asking Hodgins for money, but realistically she knew her accounts would be frozen quickly by the FBI. Meanwhile, someone as paranoid as Hodgins had money and property rentals in any number of countries under various arms of Cantilever Group. She was also determined to remain a part of the investigation to clear her own name and would need some contact with the evidence. Cam was too busy doing her best to keep the Jeffersonian out of the FBI's suspicions and needed to remain uncompromised while Angela needed to focus her attentions on hacking Pelant.

"Anyway, you should get cleaned up and get some sleep. There's a bag for you in the bathroom. You're going to have to dye your hair but make sure not to leave the boxes in the trash; we'll take it with us and dump everything, including your car tomorrow. We'll head somewhere more civilized in the morning, somewhere with big crowds."

"You're going with us?" Brennan was confused; didn't that make them too obvious, to easy to spot?

"Just for a day or two, got some people to see up North to make a few arrangements. Then we'll split up again for a week or so. Trust me baby, I know what I'm doing. Now go get ready, I'll see if I can get the munchkin here to sleep."

Trust him. He saved her life by running once before, she supposed it was not entirely unreasonable to hope he could do it once more.


	3. Night 4

_**Author's Note**: Thank you all for your very kind reviews! I've never tackled a multi-chapter fic like this before and the feedback is incredibly helpful. Also, I know this chapter may seem a little slow, but I swear I have a plan, I just need to get the foundation down first!_

* * *

Pelant had been in their house. Their _home_. His _daughter's room_.

If there had been any ounce of doubt in Booth's mind about Bones' decision to run with Christine, it was completely eradicated by 15 seconds of video.

Booth hadn't been home in a few days. The day after he watched his family drive off into the setting sun, Booth forced himself off Christine's sofa, dressed, and went back to work. He didn't see the point in staying home on unpaid suspension when there was no one left there to protect. But once he arrived at the Hoover, he found that he was unable to leave. The same dread of returning to a silent, empty house that had kept him cemented to the church steps that first night returned full force and this time won out. So for two nights Booth dozed fitfully on his office couch until finally Caroline and her booming voice proclaimed that he was stinking up the building and forced him home. He had to admit, even his FBI tail seemed grateful for the change of scenery.

And so it was that on night four Booth found himself once again pacing the halls of his dark and barren home. He still could not bring himself to sleep in their bed alone and even Christine's room held no comfort once the batteries in her mobile finally worn down after hours of continuous use. Finally growing weary of passing from one empty room to the next, he settled himself at the kitchen table, an opened but untouched beer sweating in front of him. He swore he could hear Bones' voice telling him to get up and get a damn coaster to protect their brand new cherry wood table as he absently picked at the damp label. He reached for Brennan's laptop, having been downloaded and abandoned by the FBI forensic team days earlier. Booth activated the video card, feeling foolish knowing that his daughter was not asleep in her crib at the other end of the camera's lens, but desperate to see her sleeping face one more time. He briefly thanked Bones' childcare paranoia which had made her install nanny-cam software to retain the last few days of footage on the computer's hard drive. The night-darkened image of his sleeping little girl flooded the screen and Booth let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. There she was, silently sucking her pacifier, blanket clutched tightly in her teeny right fist. For just a moment he allowed himself to imagine that it was real, that she was safe and home just one floor above him.

He fast forwarded through the footage, hoping to get a glimpse of Brennan as well to trick his mind into relaxing just a bit so he could sleep tonight. Instead he found Pelant.

Pelant was standing in his daughter's room, grinning directly at the camera. It was just a few seconds of footage and Booth scrambled to pause the video but he was too slow. Damning his own technological incompetence, he tried desperately to rewind and find the bastard again. But the software froze, giving off a series of beeps before crashing the computer completely. He jammed his finger at the power button, trying to get the image back but knew it was too late. Pelant knew what he was doing when he posed for that mug shot, taunting Booth and knowing full well he could ensure that the evidence would not survive long enough for anyone else to witness.

He muttered a curse under his breath before grabbing for his cell phone to call Angela. It was too late to call, but he had to try anyway. Even though he was sure Pelant had guaranteed the footage would be irretrievable he knew at the very least Angela would believe what he had witnessed, a minor comfort but a valuable one at a time when he was feeling so very alone. And if the FBI happened to overhear the conversation, gain a little motivation to resume tailing Pelant, so be it.

"Booth?" Her alert voice answering on the first ring indicated that she hadn't been anywhere near asleep either.

"He was here!" Booth could barely get the words out around his anger.

"Who? Who was where?"

"Pelant. He was in my house! In Christine's, in her _bedroom_." The last few words were exhaled through gritted teeth as he ascended the stairs to see the scene of the crime for himself.

"When? Now?" Angela was already tumbling out of bed and pulling her shoes on, trying to remember where she left her car keys. What she was going to do upon arriving at the house that a fully armed federal agent wasn't already capable of, she had no idea. But hearing the sound, the rage in his voice, she couldn't just sit idle in the safety of her own home.

"No, I don't know, a few days ago maybe, I couldn't… the video is gone. Of course. I have no proof. But he was there on the nanny-cam, _in her room_." He now stood in the center of the baby's room, mimicking Pelant's stance looking up and directly into the camera.

"Maybe it's not too late. I can try to retrieve the footage, maybe it was backed up somewhere."

"Angela…" he voice broke again, knowing his friend meant well, but suddenly so tired and unwilling to allow himself to hope.

"You wouldn't have called at three in the morning if you didn't want me to try, Booth. I'm on my way, FBI surveillance and Cam's rules be damned."

He gave a sarcastic laugh, "There's nothing for them to learn from us anyway, for us to be conspiring about, we have _nothing_."

"Booth, maybe now we have something. I'm getting pretty good at this hacking thing." She was now fully dressed and violently shaking Hodgins' shoulder to wake him to watch out for Michael. "Maybe, maybe you should come here. Bring Bren's laptop. Who knows what else he did while he was in the house." Now she was getting frantic as the multitude of possibilities for Pelant's visit ran through her mind. "He could have planted a bomb or something! Booth, get out!"

Booth had already reached a similar conclusion but instead of leaving began rapidly re-destroying Christine's room, pulling stuffed animals and books from the bookcase to locate anything that Pelant may have planted, any reason for him to be in the baby's room.

"The FBI already went through this whole place, after Pelant was here. You don't think they would have found an explosive if he planted one?"

"The FBI wasn't looking for bombs, Booth! They were looking for evidence, evidence of Bren's guilt. Get out of there now, or I'm coming over to drag you out. And if we both blow up, Brennan will never forgive you."

"Pelant's not an explosives guy, Ange. Too low tech." He had emptied the bookcase completely and began flipping over the shelves themselves.

Angela considered his argument for a moment, before shooting it down. "We don't know what Pelant is. We don't know what or who he wants, or what his motive is. We don't know anything for certain at this point."

Booth was rapidly losing speed in his search, the energy borne from fear and anger depleting as helplessness took over. His gut said that Angela was right though. Now that Pelant was truly free and had access to all his toys, who could say what he would do? And breaking into their house, overriding their private security system didn't exactly lend itself to positive motives.

"Booth?" Angela prompted and Booth knew he had been silent too long for her comfort.

"Yeah," he leaned back against the door jam and closed his eyes in defeat.

"Come sleep here tonight. We'll get our own security team to go through the house with a fine tooth comb first thing in the morning, I promise. Just please, get in your car and come stay here. Hodgins will bring you breakfast in bed tomorrow…" Angela tried to lighten the situation just for a moment, anything to convince him to get out of the house. She had no way of making sure that Brennan or Christine was safe tonight, but if she could keep at least Booth safe for just a few hours…

He gave a short, wry laugh. "Alright, you win. But, Bugman better be wearing pants."

xXx

Booth had to admit it was one of the better nights' sleep than he had had in recent days. Despite having lived alone the majority of his life, he had quickly become accustomed to the voices and creaks and people that usually filled his new home with Bones. Spending the night in Angela's and Hodgins' guest room, he could almost ignore the feeling of their foreign sheets against his skin and the strange smell of their laundry detergent flooding his nose if he instead concentrated on the sounds. He had allowed the creaking of their foundation settling, the just barely noticeable buzz of Michael's baby monitor to lull his sleepy mind into a false sense of being safe in his own home with his own family.

Of course, the comfort was short lived. Only shortly after eight Michael's cries brought him back to full consciousness. His sleep addled mind was slow to process that there was no monitor by his bedside to silence, and no Brennan to kick awake to debate whose turn it was to get Christine.

He finally stumbled to the kitchen to find Angela with Michael tucked under one arm, bouncing him into submission while simultaneously trying to hack Brennan's laptop which was propped up on the kitchen island.

"Morning," she greeted him apologetically, acknowledging that it was Michael who had awoken him. "There's coffee in the pot."

He nodded and turned to pour himself a mug, only then noting with surprise the time on the microwave. "I didn't realize it was so late."

"Well, we've all been burning the midnight oil, I didn't have the heart to wake you. Could have used a few more hours myself but little man was not on board with that plan."

"I'm sorry, I'm sure my melodramatic late night call didn't help anyone's sleep patterns."

"Don't. Don't apologize." Angela slammed the lid of the computer closed, startling both him and Michael. "She is my best friend, and you are both my family. But ever since she left we've all been operating like… like independent contractors! And we can't keep working like this if we're going to bring everyone home. Our little team only works when we work _together_. Cam was right to keep us apart in the beginning, but now, Bren's gone and we have no evidence even if we _wanted_ to be her accomplices. The FBI can watch us all they want, record every conversation we have and all it will prove is that we are running this investigation by the book. So from now on we do this _together_."

Booth was too stunned to respond. He knew Angela wasn't having any easier of a time than himself with Brennan gone, and she was right, throwing his own words right back at him. Take any one of them out of the equation and what happens? Especially when they were already down one very central player. He lowered his eyes in submission before nodding in agreement.

"Good." She settled Michael into his high chair and returned to pulling the data from Brennan's computer. "Now, finish your coffee and go home. I gave Hodgins' the keys to your house and I take no responsibility for whatever damages he and his super secret security team are currently inflicting."


End file.
